Donald Trump prays at Ohel Chabad Lubavitch on Oct. 07, 2024. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh
March 30, 2025
President Donald Trump first discussed the idea to enlist Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, after a visit to the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s grave on Oct. 7, 2024, the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.
Trump drove to and from the New York City gravesite, known as the Ohel, with Howard Lutnick, the eventual pick for commerce secretary. During the car ride, the two discussed ways to balance the U.S. budget. “I’m going to go recruit Elon,” Lutnick told Trump. “I don’t know Elon, but he’s perfect for this.”
A week later, Lutnick flew to Texas where he met with Musk for two hours. Musk told Lutnick he wanted to cut 80% of the federal workforce, similar to what he had done at Twitter when he acquired the social media platform.
“We’re going to name it DOGE,” said Lutnick, who said he already registered the name. Lutnick recalled the story on a recent episode of the All-In podcast.
Musk told Fox News last week that he intends to cut $1 trillion from the U.S. deficit and wrap up his work with DOGE by the end of May.
‘Pretty cool’ way to get Orthodox votes
In the interview, Lutnick also said that Trump believed he’d secure tens of thousands of Orthodox votes in New York by visiting the gravesite.
“You know, the people who wear black hats think he’s the Messiah,” Lutnick said, referring to a movement that believes Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, is the messiah. The Chabad-Lubavitch leadership has long rejected such claims.
“They have a crypt for him where you write a note and you put a note in,” Lutnick said. “And so we agreed we’d go out to that grave site, and we would probably win 60,000 of those kinds of voters, which is pretty cool.”
Post-election polls showed Trump and Republican candidates increased their support in New York’s key swing districts with sizable Jewish populations. In Crown Heights, the worldwide headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, Trump received 65% of the vote.
The gravesite in Queens has become a popular pilgrimage point for followers of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and the broader Jewish community, as well as politicians from all sides of the political spectrum.
Wearing a yarmulke and standing beside the grave alongside Chabad representatives, relatives of American hostages and Lutnick, Trump recited a chapter of Psalms, placed a note on the grave and laid a small stone on the headstone. He also lit a memorial candle to honor the Oct. 7 victims.
In 2016, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, prayed at the Ohel on the weekend before the election.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
